QOS Policy Statistics Test

Quality of Service (QoS) Policy is a network bandwidth management tool that allows you to prioritize and manage network traffic. QoS Policy helps balance network performance with the cost of service ensuring mission-critical and latency-sensitive applications receive the necessary bandwidth while competing against lower-priority traffic. Without proper QoS management, network congestion can occur. Critical applications may compete with non-essential traffic, leading to delays, packet loss, and poor performance. This is exactly where the QOS Policy Statistics test helps the administrators!

This test monitors the QoS policies and collects statistics on data/packets that had conformed/violated the QoS policies. Conformance/violations of QoS policies may lead to slow response times, higher latency, or reduced throughput. Using this test, administrators can find out violation/conformance rates and take corrective actions.

By default, this test is disabled. To enable the test, go to the enable / disable tests page using the menu sequence: Agents -> Tests -> Enable/Disable, pick Cisco Routersas the Component type, set Performance as the Test type, choose this test from the disabled tests list, and click on the >> button to move the test to the enableD tests list.

Target of the test : A Cisco device

Agent deploying the test : An external agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each QoS policy.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter Description

Test Period

How often should the test be executed.

Host

The host for which the test is to be configured.

SNMPPort

The port at which the monitored target exposes its SNMP MIB; the default is 161.

SNMPVersion

By default, the eG agent supports SNMP version 1. Accordingly, the default selection in the SNMPVersion list is v1. However, if a different SNMP framework is in use in your environment, say SNMP v2 or v3, then select the corresponding option from this list.

SNMPCommunity

The SNMP community name that the test uses to communicate with the firewall. This parameter is specific to SNMP v1 and v2 only. Therefore, if the SNMPVersion chosen is v3, then this parameter will not appear.

Username

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. SNMP version 3 (SNMPv3) is an extensible SNMP Framework which supplements the SNMPv2 Framework, by additionally supporting message security, access control, and remote SNMP configuration capabilities. To extract performance statistics from the MIB using the highly secure SNMP v3 protocol, the eG agent has to be configured with the required access privileges – in other words, the eG agent should connect to the MIB using the credentials of a user with access permissions to be MIB. Therefore, specify the name of such a user against the Username parameter. 

Context

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. An SNMP context is a collection of management information accessible by an SNMP entity. An item of management information may exist in more than one context and an SNMP entity potentially has access to many contexts. A context is identified by the SNMPEngineID value of the entity hosting the management information (also called a contextEngineID) and a context name that identifies the specific context (also called a contextName). If the Username provided is associated with a context name, then the eG agent will be able to poll the MIB and collect metrics only if it is configured with the context name as well. In such cases therefore, specify the context name of the username in the Context text box.  By default, this parameter is set to none.

AuthPass

Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned Username. This parameter once again appears only if the SNMPVersion selected is v3.

Confirm Password

Confirm the AuthPass by retyping it here.

AuthType

This parameter too appears only if v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. From the AuthType list box, choose the authentication algorithm using which SNMP v3 converts the specified username and password into a 32-bit format to ensure security of SNMP transactions. You can choose between the following options:

  • MD5 - Message Digest Algorithm
  • SHA - Secure Hash Algorithm
  • SHA224 - Secure Hash Algorithm 224 bit
  • SHA256 - Secure Hash Algorithm 256 bit
  • SHA384 - Secure Hash Algorithm 384 bit
  • SHA512 - Secure Hash Algorithm 512 bit

EncryptFlag

This flag appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, the this flag is set to No by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the Yes option. 

EncryptType

If the EncryptFlag is set to Yes, then you will have to mention the encryption type by selecting an option from the EncryptType list. SNMP v3 supports the following encryption types:

  • DES - Data Encryption Standard
  • 3DES - Triple Data Encryption Standard
  • AES - Advanced Encryption Standard
  • AES128 - Advanced Encryption Standard 128 bit
  • AES192 - Advanced Encryption Standard 192 bit
  • AES256 - Advanced Encryption Standard 256 bit

EncryptPassword

Specify the encryption password here.

Confirm Password

Confirm the encryption password by retyping it here.

Timeout

Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in this text box. The default is 10 seconds.

Data Over TCP

By default, in an IT environment, all data transmission occurs over UDP. Some environments however, may be specifically configured to offload a fraction of the data traffic – for instance, certain types of data traffic or traffic pertaining to specific components – to other protocols like TCP, so as to prevent UDP overloads. In such environments, you can instruct the eG agent to conduct the SNMP data traffic related to the monitored target over TCP (and not UDP). For this, set this flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No.

EngineID

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. Sometimes, the test may not report metrics when AES192 or AES256 is chosen as the Encryption type. To ensure that the test report metrics consistently, administrators need to set this flag to Yes. By default, this parameter is set to No.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Conformed packets

Indicates the rate of network packets that were conformed to this QoS policy.

Packets/sec

 

A low value of this measure indicates that the network is experiencing poor performance due to insufficient allocation.

Conformed data

Indicates the rate of data that were conformed to this QoS policy.

MB/Sec

Conformed bit rate

Indicates the amount of data that had conformed to this QoS policy.

Mbps

 

Non conformed packets

Indicates the rate of network packets that did not conform to this QoS policy.

Packets/sec

 

Non conformed data

Indicates the rate of data that did not conform to this QoS policy.

MB/Sec

 

Non conformed bit rate

Indicates the amount of data that did not conform to this QoS policy.

Mbps

 

Violated packets

Indicates the rate of network packets that had violated this QoS policy.

Packets/sec

 

A high value is a cause for concern. Administrators have to find out the underlying reasons for violations.

Violated data

Indicates the rate of data that had violated this QoS policy.

MB/Sec

Violated bit rate

Indicates the amount of data that had violated this QoS policy.

Mbps